This is an argument for keyword arguments (often simulated in JavaScript by taking an object as a single argument, which would work great here: being both faster and frankly somewhat more logical as it is a single step rather than a chain of modifications), and I would argue doesn't really "challenge the status quo" other than to make the argument yet again that named arguments are pretty cool (even though I do tend to use [@"Get on the road" stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"road" withString:@"bus" as an example of how ludicrously verbose Objective-C can feel ;P).